Confessions of a Cornwall Grad
by Librasmile
Summary: We can't all go to Hogwarts you know. Doesn't mean we want to end up making change on the Knight Bus.
1. Chapter 1

**Confessions of a Cornwall Grad**

**By Librasmile**

**(Brit-picked version)**

**Disclaimer:** _Of course I don't own them (…well okay, Demeter IS my b*tch :^)p ). I drool over them occasionally while J.K. Rowling graciously looks the other way…_

**Author's Note:** _This story takes place during the two years that separate my two WIPs, __**Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant**__ and its prequel, __**The Healer's Apprentice.**__ Yes I know, that's three WIPs on the go! Sigh. What can I say? Not only can I NOT think in a straight line, my muse just won't let me. She plays the tune, I dance to it. Hope you like._

**Rating: T** for suggestive language and situations.

**CONFESSIONS OF A CORNWALL GRAD**

We can't all go to Hogwarts you know.

Doesn't mean we want to wind up making change on the Knight Bus.

We're not squibs. Thank gods. We're...well…

I guess my name explains it all as it seems my name is my fate. Demeter Spencer. Abbreviate my name and you get D. Spencer. Or "dispenser." It's not as if I haven't heard that joke a million times, especially after I matriculated into the Administration and Accounting track. Because that's what I do. I dispense the bags of galleons the teachers receive as salary every month. I dispense the funds the Headmaster requests for his excursions into gods knows what and that the board of governors would be better off not asking about. D. Spencer. That is what my certificate, courtesy of the Cornwall Institute for Practical Magic, says I am equipped to do, dispense.

I dispense because I cannot do magic.

Well not much anyway.

None of the Cornwall graduates can. That's the whole reason the school exists. What do you do with wizards and witches who have just enough magic to escape Muggle-dom but not enough to pass a single course in Dumbledore's domain? They had to put us somewhere. The Muggles have something similar. Vocational schools? Yes, that's it.

As I said we don't have much magic. But we're still not squibs. We might not have much magic but we still have some. We're not nothing. Of course we don't get much consideration either.

We never eat in the Great Hall, where even Hagrid gets a regular seat. We're higher than the house elves but lower than the students. Unless you were really paying attention you'd never know we were there. Which makes it that much easier for the faculty to pretend that we aren't. Still, Filch doesn't eat with them. We're above Filch. I suppose that's some comfort.

We do have our own staff room which doubles as a dining room. It's 50-50 whether we sleep over or not. Some of us have quarters and some of us come in from Hogsmeade everyday. I think the Hogsmeade folks have a better lot. After so many years I've started to feel like the spinster aunt in the attic.

I did have greater ambitions than this. I had hoped to work at Gringotts. The goblins seem to prefer us. Outside of the curse-breakers they really don't like to have much truck with humans. When they can't avoid hiring us, they like to pick those of us who are just this side of squibs. Unfortunately, I was beat out by that witch from Leicester. I'd been certain I'd come in first! But she beat me by 2 points.

Yes we take OWLS. Not NEWTS though. After OWLS we take another year in our specialty and then we're free to make our way. My specialty was Magical Administration and Accounting. I've always loved numbers. They have their own magic. You could manipulate them as dexterously as a wand and create effects just as powerful.

I liked that feeling of power. When you don't have enough magic to get into Hogwarts you take every little advantage you can get.

But as I said I didn't score high enough for Gringotts. Wretched goblins.

But I got lucky. Uriah Sands, who'd grown up in Hogsmeade, told me that Hogwarts needed a new bursar. The old one apparently had had too much to say about staffers' spending habits as he'd paid the school's bills and especially when he'd handed out the bags of galleons that constituted the faculty's monthly salaries. After getting himself hexed – they suspect it was a potion in the coffee; he'd have known to duck if he'd seen a wand – he was persuaded to take early retirement and a replacement was needed. Uriah had been at Cornwall with me in the stonemasons' course before moving on to become a fellow of the Pythagorean College so he owled me. We've always been friends.

It was manna from heaven.

The interview was nerve-wracking but I survived – and even impressed the Deputy Headmistress with my no-nonsense attitude, which happily mirrored her own. The Headmaster was the final arbiter though. How I survived that audience I'll never know. He is as fey as Minerva McGonagall is practical. He gives the impression of not knowing a knut from a **shilling **and seeming to believe that the castle runs on air. Of course it doesn't. Even if the elves are all but enslaved to the school, there are still salaries to pay; storerooms to fill; plumbing, stone and windows to maintain. Somebody has to know when to order classroom equipment, medical supplies, and replacement Quidditch brooms. Somebody has to reconcile the accounts when the faculty overspends their budgets. No, it's not transfiguration, or "foolish wand waving" or a "simmering cauldron." But it keeps the candles lit and somebody has to pay attention to these things. Magic can't do everything you know. I suspect the Headmaster knows this but likes to pretend he doesn't. It makes it easier to play innocent with me when I have to negotiate with a creditor thanks to some extravagance of his or provide cover when the Board of Governors complains about an expense. If I never have to be in the same room as the oily blonde slick known as Lucius Malfoy it will be too soon!

But I don't care about the Headmaster's peccadilloes. He could dance on the ceiling with Peeves and charge tickets for all I care. It'd probably be a great fund-raiser if he did and maybe I'll casually drop the suggestion in conversation the next time we meet to do the budgets. For now though, it's all about pleasing him. Keeping him happy is a small price to pay for the security of employment at Hogwarts. Other than Gringotts there's no safer place to be. I have free room and board, which – if I watch my sickles – leaves me with plenty of money to salt away.

I can even splurge on the occasional treat. I prefer to indulge in a little shopping in Diagon Alley or visit a day spa in the cool gardens of Mint Alley. But Uriah has been pressuring me to spend time with him in Hogsmeade. His parents still live there on their tidy little farm in their snug house. Uriah's father was a stonemason too. Uriah Sr. built the house so it'll take an attack from You-Know-Who himself to bring it down. I know what Uriah wants. And I should accept. What are the chances that I'll do better?

And yet…

The thing none of the students or faculty ever say about Cornwall is that it's the last refuge of diminished expectations. Muggles have their Oxfords and vocational schools, the wizard world has Hogwarts and Cornwall. Money never stops one from going to Hogwarts. I should know. Every year, I dip into the school's treasury for the scholarship students myself. Always under Dumbledore's orders of course. As I said we're never allowed into the Great Hall to eat but we're allowed to watch the Start of Year Feast and the Sorting Ceremony. Why we're required to stay up in the balconies and not allowed to stand unobtrusively along the walls and observe I'll never know. Perhaps they fear we'll leech the magic from the room. Perhaps they think the envy and frustration will finally get the better of us and we'll pounce on the little First Years like vampires, sinking our teeth into their tender little necks and sucking the magic out of them. Ha. If only… No it's not money that keeps students out of Hogwarts. It's magical power levels. I and my kind are simply not good enough to enroll here. Full stop. Perhaps we were at one point, generations back along our family lines. But somewhere along the way, the magic started diminishing, decade after decade until, unlike grandpa who got into Hogwarts by the skin of his teeth, we are simply barred. That's the story of my family anyway.

So we never say it out loud at Cornwall. Why? It depends. Cornwall students come in two flavors: those from families like mine where the magic is slowly leaking away and those from families of squibs whose magic is finally renewing itself. That is, some students come from families that are on the way up the ladder and others come from families that are on the way down. You'd think we could meet civilly somewhere in the middle. Instead the ones on the way down look down upon the ones on the way up. Not that I feel that way about Uriah. I've never had a truer friend. But his mother and his grandparents on both sides are squibs. And my mother made it clear the day we finally accepted that the Hogwarts letter was never going to come that I had a responsibility to marry as well as I could. That means finding someone stronger than me magically. Uriah is strong. He's a Pythagorean Fellow for goodness' sakes. And although membership depends more on technical competence and mystical knowledge rather than raw magic, it's still prestigious.

But he's not THAT much stronger than I. And a stonemason could never compare to a potions master.

Yes, I know, he's completely out of my sphere. Even more than the Headmaster he looks like a mage from the Dark Ages, still basking in the afterglow left by Merlin's departure. He could be a magical Mordred himself. He's cutting and cruel and an absolute terror to children and colleagues alike. But the power ripples off him in waves. I can feel it prickling along my skin when I come into the Headmaster's office and he's still there. For all his surliness, they are close, he and the Headmaster.

He has no lover in Hogsmeade. Or if he has I haven't heard of it. And I've kept watch. I've discreetly asked around. Never directly myself of course. Even though Uriah travels often and his parents are often overloaded with work on the farm, it's just too risky. I can't be caught. I can't even be seen.

Because as I said, he's out of my league.

If he has needs, he's getting them met in Diagon Alley, although with his dark power I wouldn't be surprised if it was Knockturn Alley. I don't care. No I DO care. If he's trolling Knockturn Alley for his pleasures he won't be able to do it forever. No matter how much he hates it, he's still a teacher and can't afford to let himself be seen as morally corrupt. From what I hear about his past, he can't afford another mistake. In fact it's his past that opens the door for me. If he truly was, as they say, a follower of You-Know-Who, it doesn't matter that he switched sides and was pardoned. No decent witch of his class will have him. Otherwise he'd be married already. Because I've seen the way the other witches look at him, the female faculty members and the women in Hogsmeade. They don't let him know they're doing it but they look all the same. He's magnetic. And he has no more control over it than he does over the color of his eyes. Clearly, one of them would have made a move after all these years if they weren't afraid of being tarred by his reputation.

Yes, I know magnets repel as well as attract. But a determined woman with a critical need and a persistent attitude wouldn't let that stop her. It's snobbishness, plain and simple, that has kept him alone.

Well I can't afford to have that kind of pride.

Even if I'd had it before, Cornwall would have beaten it out of me. It's not that the teachers are cruel. In fact, I think they coddle us a little too much. They're oh so eager to remind us that we're all equal, that it's the mage's spirit and not his or her magic that counts. Well of course they're lying – with good intentions but still lying. That's not how the wizard world works. After all, not even Cornwall admits squibs. And while Hogwarts shelters in a powerfully warded castle fortress as students arrive on their dedicated train line, Cornwall students occupy a modest manor house in the shadow of the ruins of Tintagel and make their way there as best they can by portkey, floo, or even Muggle transport. It's only the first years who take the Knight Bus. Once they've had a year for the naivety to wash off, they follow the manner of the older students who take the Knight Bus only when they have to and only at night. It's bad enough that we have to spend five years scrabbling around the remains of Camelot dreaming of a glory our families will never have or will never have again. But the Knight Bus is just too much. We may not have gotten into Hogwarts but none of us wanted to become Stan Shunpike.

Uriah never seemed to care though. He's always been too laid back for his own good. Truthfully, he really shouldn't be wasting his time with me. He doesn't have to. He's a Pythagorean Fellow. It's not a Hogwarts certificate but it's close enough without actually having attended. There's a certain delicacy in the magic it takes to erect stone buildings, a certain subtlety, believe it or not. Not every wizard can master it. Those who do are quite respected. Still, I never see him casting a wandering eye over the seventh year girls when he comes for his annual inspection of Hogwarts' foundations. He only ever seems to have eyes for me.

Such a romantic.

When he comes he always manages to meet me for lunch. And always before he goes he manages to get me to his parents' house for dinner. His parents' house is so…different. They're no richer than my family, yet somehow they manage to be…happy…

I fear I will never understand Uriah.

But the sour lines on Severus Snape's striking face bespeak of anger; resentment; deprivation; and pain. Not just of dark, nefarious deeds but of scrabbling for far too much although equipped with far too little. The grinding frustration of years of laboring under scarcities too big crammed into rooms too small.

Him I understand.

So forgive me Uriah but I have to try. Perhaps you won't have to. But if you never have to that means I've failed and I don't intend to fail. Some needs are basic: the need for food and rest; the need for respectability and sex. The last two are the hardest to find to any satisfaction. And for this man, they're nigh on impossible. Good. That means he'll need me. I'm not a Hogwarts girl but then he was never going to get that anyway. And he's too proud to be with a squib or a Muggle, not openly, not for any reason other than physical gratification, to scratch an itch. I'll let him scratch and I'll keep him from looking like a lecher while he does it. After all, that's what wives are for isn't it?

Oh yes, he'll resist. But I'm willing to wait. And negotiate. I took a whole course on it. It was taught by a Gringotts goblin so I learned from the best.

What's his alternative? Prey on the seventh years? I've seen his eyes wander more than once to a girl in his own house. I've heard the faculty talking. She's one of his favorites – apparently innocently because the faculty would never be able to sit on such a bombshell. I don't need their corroboration though because I know two things. First, he worships the Headmaster so he'd fear to lose his trust. Second, he's too cunning to court the headmaster's wrath. Add in the fact that he can't make a habit of going to Knockturn Alley and that leaves me – just a few floors above his dungeon and with a fireplace connected to the castle's internal floo network.

Oh yes, I'll wait as he winds himself up tighter and tighter. And I'll look good while I'm doing it. The epitome of respectability. That was the whole point of the charitable witches and wizards who put up the donations that established Cornwall back in 1688. As I said earlier, they had to do something with the children who had just enough magic to avoid being called squibs but not enough to go to Hogwarts. They needed to be disciplined, taught a trade, socially groomed on how to properly relate to their betters. They needed respectability.

I can't do a simple _wingardium leviosa_ but damned if I'm not respectable.

Don't hate me Uriah.

You of all people should understand.

You were at Cornwall too.


	2. Chapter 2

******CORNWALL PART 2**

**By Librasmile**

_**Disclaimer: **__Of course, with the exception of the original characters, these are not my beauties. They are the glamorous property of JK Rowling who lets them slum from time to time. Thanks JK!_

_**Author's Notes:**__ It's been brought to my attention that several items in this story diverge significantly from canon. So let's get a few ground rules set. This will NOT necessarily conform to canon, so consider it an Alternate Universe story. _

_Here are the contours of my universe. _

_Although I've read all the books, I MUCH prefer the movies, including film Snape (i.e. Mr. Alan Rickman's portrayal). So I'm more likely to reference something from the film rather than the novel. Next, I don't believe that Hogwarts is tuition-free, even if book canon implies the Ministry provides subsidies. I also believe that wands should cost WAY more than Rowling says they do. To me, the necessity for a wand at Hogwarts is akin to a student's need for a personal computer today. As such, I think a wand can range from 100 to 500 galleons. The range in costs has to do with how well the wand is fitted to your magic as well as the varying cost of the wand materials. _

_**A note about the timeline:**__ I'm a bit fuzzy on the timelines but I should mention that this story takes place __**roughly**__ around the Prisoner of Azkaban era although I don't tackle Remus or all the hoopla over Sirius' escape. My goal right now is to finish the story. I might go back and revise to add in the werewolf or perhaps I'll mention them in the next chapter. I don't know. _

_This story occurs between my Severus-centric WIPs __**"The Healer's Apprentice"**__ and __**"Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant."**__ If you'd like to read more about the Broomall girl mentioned below you can read either of those – and feel free to leave a review! Also, I consider this story to be part of an entire arc whose prologue could be considered my completed three-chapter story __**"For the Price of My Familiar."**__ At the moment, the last story of the arc is slated to be __**"Well Done, My Good and Faithful Servant"**__ which is also a WIP._

* * *

I love the feel of his wand in my hand.

It's beautiful actually: carved ebony – a rarity – satiny and warm with the solidity of oak and a soft crimson undertone almost like rosewood. He doesn't mind – after all what harm could _I _do to _him_ – but he doesn't tell me what its core is made of. I suppose it wouldn't matter if he did. I don't have one. Cornwall students don't get them.

Well, actually that's not quite true.

We do get them. But unlike Hogwarts students we don't start with them. There's no giddy trip to Ollivander's for us. We show up bare-handed and take a full year of core studies – fundamentals of potions (_his _specialty), fundamentals of astronomy, basic theory (though no practice) of charms and transfiguration – before we even _touch_ a wand. There's no spellwork at all until the second year. And when we get a wand it comes from the school's general pool. There's no special fitting, no one-on-one time with the wand's actual maker, no careful selection of various woods, no weighty deliberation on wand cores. And when we graduate we return the wand to the school.

If we get a wand at all we pay for it ourselves and it rarely if ever comes from Ollivander's. We get ours second-, third- or fourth-hand from one of the quasi-legal dealers who skulk through the no-man's land of dead-ends and cul-de-sacs separating Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. Prices are inflated of course. What Ollivander charges between 100 and 500 galleons* for the dealers can inflate up to 1000. It's outrageous! How could something used cost more than something new? Even a Muggle wouldn't fall for that!

Or at least that's what I used to think. Then Severus explained: a wand is organic; so, like a fine wine, its quality – or rather its power – improves over time. Another surprise: there's even a sort of advantage in getting a used wand. You can do heavy magic with a used wand right away but not with a new one. A new wand and its owner need to get to know each other, become used to each other. The wand and the wizard grow together. If the wizard has it long enough, eventually his aura imprints itself onto the wand. So if it passes to another's hand the new owner gets to piggyback on the echoes of the pervious owner's power. Anyone who snags a wand once owned by an especially powerful witch or wizard actually gets to experience some of that person's power. Can you imagine the rush? No wonder the blasted things cost so much used! And no wonder you can't get wizards to sell their wands for love or money! I always knew it was an implicit rule that wands don't leave the family, I'd just never known why. I suppose I hadn't bothered to think about it. Keeping a wand in the family is like having a part of the deceased's aura still with you. So how unlucky would a family have to be to actually sell it? That's assuming it was actually sold and not stolen… Couple a tight supply with wizards desperate to cover up the lowliness of their origins and – voila! – high-priced used wands.

Of course the down side of buying used, Severus warned, is that you have to make sure the wand is clean; no Unforgivables showing up if some ministry officials find an excuse to cast _priori incantatum_ on it. And despite the exorbitant cost, it's safest to save up and pay full price from what I hear. Unless you're absolutely desperate and in need of a wand _right now_, under _no_ circumstances enroll in a payment plan; too many of these so-called dealers are little better than Muggle loan sharks. I'd rather take my chances with a goblin – except goblins aren't allowed to carry wands.** They fought the Goblin Rebellions over that and lost, so they're hardly in a position to try selling them. There are easier ways for them to turn a quick profit.

Some Cornwall alums just avoid the hassle altogether and never bother to get a wand. Some of us are lucky and have them handed down from relatives. I hear that's how the Weasley boy, the youngest, originally got his. Then he broke it in that fool stunt crashing his father's Muggle car into the Whomping Willow. Not only did his stupidity land all over the front page of the _Daily Prophet_, but his parents then had to scrape together the galleons to buy another. I don't know if Arthur Weasley took out a loan or got an advance on his pay. What I do know is that I had to extend the deadline for their tuition payment while they presumably scrambled to cover both costs. Wasteful brat!***

But I _do_ actually have a wand. It was my grandfather's. I wasn't allowed to take it with me to Cornwall and neither was my sister. Our mother was using it. And since the school provided one and neither one of us could afford to pull a Ron Weasley, it made no sense to risk taking it away from home. That's probably where it is now. We share it among us. It's the last one left in the immediate family. My father never had one. Where the others went, back when we had strong magic in the family, I have no idea. Whatever happened I'm sure they weren't sold. You have to pay too dearly to get them – my parents certainly couldn't have afforded to buy one for me. And they're supposed to last a lifetime – or even, if misfortune demands it, several generations.

I don't have the guts to ask him whether his wand is an original purchase or a family legacy as I suspect, since I also suspect that he didn't grow up with money or even basic security. I wouldn't call it an heirloom. "Heirloom" is the word you use for something you _want_ to have and use for generations. Most wizards prefer to be buried with their wands. If the family keeps them it's usually only as a remembrance of their kin; they usually would never want to keep using them. As Severus explained, a wand is a highly individual thing, a delicate instrument – for all the fierce power that can flow through it – that's meant to mold itself to its user, like a second skin.

That's why I love touching his wand, grasping it. It's almost like his skin. He smells and tastes bitter and sweet, like plums and every inch of him vibrates, like the thrum of power you get when you kneel down, really tune in and touch the earth. Even I can feel it. Sometimes it makes me shake just like the first time we…well…

Ironically I have his little favorite to thank for that.

No not the Malfoy brat. Her. The one with the fierce friend and faraway eyes. The Broomall girl. Ophelia. He'd been chaperoning a trip to Hogsmeade and I'd seen him duck into the Hog's Head for a quick drink. At the same time, I'd seen her with the Raby girl – Celia I think her name is – arm-in-arm as they'd headed toward Madame Etiquette's little matchmaking salon.

Abishag Witherspoon – who'd christened herself Madame Etiquette so long ago I doubt if any of the villagers remember her real name – is one of those dirty little Hogwarts secrets no one ever acknowledges. She's a marriage broker. Her main income comes from arranging marriage contracts and she gets a cut of every successful deal she negotiates. Oh she tells people she's an etiquette instructor; her avowed mission in life is to improve the deportment and social graces of local youth –including Hogwarts' students – and inculcate them with a respect for the old ways. Please. In reality, they go there to sip tea or undergo some other insipid ritual as a cover for sizing each other up. Presumably, they have their parents' written permission; otherwise the village or Headmaster could have shut Abishag down long ago.

I know they'd like to. I don't know of any young people in Hogsmeade – or their parents – who can afford her services. Besides, the only native young people who remain in the villages are those who can look forward to inheriting their parents' farms or shops or those doomed to repeat their parents' low-wage misery. The rest have either run for Diagon Alley or been sent off to Cornwall – _if_ their families can afford the fees. Precious, precious few are ever enrolled at Hogwarts. Certainly none this year nor in the last 10. No one knows why. Or if they do, they're not telling. But the fact of it rankles. I've suffered through more than one dinner table tirade over it from Uriah's normally easygoing father. It's a constant source of resentment on the part of the villagers and wariness on the part of the faculty and Headmaster.

Madame Etiquette only makes it worse. Oh she takes care not to make waves. She resides in a crumbling but otherwise tidily kept country house just across the border of Hogsmeade. The strategic position keeps her outside the jurisdiction of Hogsmeade's village council yet close to her client base. I've seen her from time to time when I do my own shopping. She holds her grocery basket with an erect posture and genial hauteur that both annoys and impresses her humbler neighbors. Her silvery white hair remains tightly leashed in her neat little bun and her floor-length Victorian dresses boast almost as many buttons as Severus' frock coats. She always takes care to tip generously and donate substantially to whichever cause is the village concern at the time. Although she rarely stays for conversation, she never fails to greet anyone. Nevertheless, the chair of the village council tends to avoid her at all costs and her path never crosses the Headmaster's. I can only assume that's its fear on the part of the chairman, although why I couldn't say. The Headmaster is another matter.

But that doesn't still the tide of privileged sixth- and seventh-years who trek through the village to her home. Every year like clockwork, as the holidays approach and especially when spring arrives, the pilgrimage begins. I've seen the students from my office window, trudging through snow, huddled together for warmth like geese or giggling and whispering as they race across the thawing grounds, jumpy as the colts on Uriah's farm. Neither inclement weather nor impending NEWTS can deter them.

She does not restrict her services by house. Attendance is only restricted by age. No one below sixth year is allowed. I can't recall hearing about a single instance of a Gryffindor participating. She draws a fair number of Ravenclaws though (presumably dragged there by Slytherin boyfriends or girlfriends still hoping to marry for love). And she gets a surprisingly high number of Hufflepuffs – hoping to marry up I guess. But her clientele is dominated by the Slytherins.

It makes sense. The other houses have their share of blood pure and impure little Fauntleroys, but the majority of the undisputed pureblood aristocracy resides in Slytherin. While perhaps half of those whelps have their marriages arranged at birth, a healthy portion – for reasons the families prefer to leave unexamined – remain unattached. Without the advantage of the Malfoy name or wealth, they need a discreet broker to get their children respectably, preferably _profitably,_ wed. After all, these aren't just _individuals _marrying, these are estates joining. Then there is the matter of combining magical bloodlines. Abishag has no qualms about thoroughly vetting a students' blood purity, and where purity of blood is a premium, there the Slytherins will follow.

Most of the students go under the cover of their Hogsmeade visits. Out of respect for their Head of House, the Slytherins do their best to remain undetected by the other teachers, but everyone knows where they are going.

Filch certainly does. How do you think I found out? He told me everything in dribs and drabs over tea. He always does eventually. You'd be amazed how informative the crusty old git can be if you just show him a bit of consideration and warmth. I know the students generally despise him and that he can be a nasty old bastard. But they have a future. He doesn't. He couldn't even get into Cornwall for gods' sake! And I've seen what he has to live on. I count it out every single month. I wouldn't exactly be Mr. Sunshine either if I had to scrape by on that. So what if he might be supplementing his income by running a few discreet tasks for Abishag, maybe even slipping her the Hogsmeade visit schedule, who am I to question that? And if my ability to open an account at one of Gringotts' more obscure branches turns out to be useful to him, well, again, it's not _my_ business to tell him how to live. Besides it's always good policy to help a co-worker…

The rest I sussed out from one of the Slytherin girls. The girls are Abishag's best promoters. Any of the uninvited who'd peep their head into Abishag's drawing room – and there have been one or two – would see students congregated at low tables, genders mixed, as Abishag walks them through the mind-taxing intricacies of luncheon, dinner or high tea. Apparently the silver settings are exquisite and self-correcting when their user flubs. On other occasions they congregate in the music parlor for dance lessons as Abishag bespells the creaky old Broadwood grand into playing itself. Students learn when to dress for which by subscribing to her newsletter.

In the old days, under Headmaster Dippet, she'd send invitations by special owl post which arrived, as all mail does, in the Great Hall. But the delivery caused so much dissension – boasting from those who'd received them, anguish from those who didn't, and the inevitable brawls between them – that Dippet eventually banned student participation altogether.

It didn't stop them. The students went anyway. And Madame Etiquette hardly paused to draw breath. Within weeks she was publishing her newsletter, insufferably titled _To aTea._Buried amidst a deluge of fluffy articles on true-life social gaffes, agony-aunt advice, and sleep-inducing treatises on manners, is her all-important schedule of events accompanied by a gossipy list of previous young soiree guests. Her clients live for that schedule – that and the registry, printed in the back, with lists of names, ages and carefully worded profiles that hint at who is likely to inherit what. The gaffes and advice columns are for the students. The registry and treatises are for the parents. Both groups devour the events schedule and gossip.

For all their quaint backwardness – the cramped linotype, archaic English, line illustrations and lack of photos – they're notoriously hard to get. Dumbledore banned those decades ago as soon as he'd assumed office. It was part of his effort to actually _enforce _Dippet's ban. Despite that, the newsletter circulates clandestinely through the Slytherin dorms with near impunity. The girls are the main readers and distributors. They pass the word to the boys. I snagged a copy from one of the Slytherin girls who'd needed me to change her wizard money for Muggle currency, no questions asked. There's no rule on the books forbidding it so I thought, why not? She'd smirked when she'd handed it over – probably amused at the peasant's curiosity. But I didn't care. There's something...titillating about seeing behind the curtain, so to speak, of a class above your own.

All of which makes Madame Etiquette Severus' particular headache.

No matter what he tries Severus has never been able to quash either the newsletter or his students' participation. I suspect his heart isn't really in it. I mean think about it. The Slytherin parents approve. They have to. They surely don't send their children to school with enough money to cover the kinds of fees Abishag's charges. I wouldn't be surprised if she requires a Gringotts certified letter of credit to assure her that a student's parents can cover a first round of candidate introductions let alone negotiations and proposals. That's a significant financial commitment. So if Severus stops it, the Slytherin parents' wrath will fall on him. And what's the payoff? I suspect he takes the stance that there are much worthier battles to fight and simply gives lip service to the Headmaster.

The Headmaster is MUCH more vexed by Madame Etiquette. I can't figure out why.

True, professional matchmakers tend to be the province of overprivileged underworked wizards. I mean why actually earn – or in most cases, replenish – your fortune when you can simply marry it? Despite its arcane aura, matchmaking is a delicate, highly subtle exercise that actually takes immense amounts of knowledge and sophistication to execute successfully. Someone who'd dare to wade into those treacherous waters, infested with Slytherin sharks, has to have absolute faith in her skill. The potential for retaliatory hexes is just too great. The only way to gain such knowledge is to claim actual close kinship to one of her clients or their ancestors where she could have learned the knowledge everyday at home – or she could study it at Cornwall. Although as a student I scoffed at Cornwall's combined Etiquette, Genealogy and Archiving concentration, seeing it in action, even if at a distance, has changed my mind completely.

In her own way, Abishag is as deft and useful a magician as the Headmaster. Without her, parents would pressure the school to have more social events – more opportunities for matchmaking – which would stress the operating budget. Or parents would be continually removing their children from school so they could attend such events at home. Severus' administrative life would be hell and Slytherin grades would probably fall. In my opinion, Madame Etiquette is a necessary evil. The sooner the Headmaster makes peace with that, the less stressed he'll be.

Of course the Headmaster would disagree.

One day I made the mistake of asking his secretary why it matters so much to him.

Hester Hardwick is a scary woman. She lives in Hogsmeade and drags her old bones here every morning at the crack of dawn, rain, snow or shine, to attend the Headmaster. I don't know why since she's all but in her dotage; perhaps she didn't save enough for old age. She spends most of her day hunkered down in what I swear used to be a monk's cell. She sits buried under rolls of parchment and muttering under her breath as she plows through the Headmaster's endless correspondence. I'm sure he's offered her quarters in the castle. But more than one elf has run screaming from that chilly hole she calls an office. It doesn't matter what they're bringing: a warm lunch, a hot tea, extra firewood. She brings her own lunch. She makes her own tea. She tends her own fires and Merlin help anyone – house elf or Headmaster – who interferes. So I doubt she'd take kindly to any change in her routine. That's fine by me. Anything that takes a few knuts off the food and firewood bills just makes it that much easier for me to balance castle accounts.

We typically don't talk; she's fiercely protective of the Headmaster and suspicious of any non-Hogwarts person approaching without a scheduled appointment or a damned good reason. You'd think he was her own child. She adores Severus too. I don't know if it's because they're equally caustic personalities or because she knows something about him I don't. I don't know. I doubt I'll ever find out because I certainly don't have the nerve to ask.

I knew better than to tickle that particular dragon so I don't know what I was thinking when I blurted out my question.

"I mean what is so wrong with Madame Etiquette," I'd asked.

For a moment I thought she'd hex me where I stood. She has a wand, although it's as gnarled and knobby as she is. But she didn't. She didn't curse me. She didn't insult me. She didn't even yell. She simply paused – the first time I'd ever seen her interrupt her work for something frivolous like office gossip. For one long chilly moment she stared at me with her rheumy, spectacled eyes. Then she said: "It's the sort of thing You-Know-Who was trying to do. Weed out the weak and breed 'em like cattle." Then she went back to work as if I wasn't even there.

It took me a full day to stop shivering.

But I guess it explains why, every so often, the Headmaster has Hester circulate an oblique memo warning students away from participating in "obsolete social rites disguised as deportment lessons or traditionalist gatherings." Inevitably, in a raging non-coincidence, the current issue of Hogsmeade's _Weekly Whistler_ runs a frustratingly timid piece questioning what really goes on in Madame's salon. Translation: Is Old Abishag duping parents into financing the use of her mansion as a comfy setting for some discreet shagging by their mostly underage children? The first time I'd read the _Whistler's_ watered-down version of that, it had taken Poppy Pomfrey to make it plain for me. Because the medical supplies budget is non-negotiable – wizarding parents would have the Minister's head if we skimped on even a bandage for their little darlings – we've never had a run-in over the Infirmary's finances. And she came out of Hufflepuff. They're always friendly, bless their clueless little hearts.

She has relatives in Hogsmeade, so she and I occasionally walk together when I have to shop in the village. It was while we were trudging back that she enlightened me. "Haven't you ever noticed how many female students check into the Infirmary or go home about two months after a trip to Madame Etiquette's," she said. Thankfully it was winter because I'm sure I would have collected a swarm of flies instead of a mouthful of snow thanks to my dropped jaw. You'd think an accountant would actually be able to _count _wouldn't you? You can't stop teenagers from having sex and no matter how well you school them in the use of contraceptive charms, mistakes will be made – which Madame Pomfrey frequently has to fix. And since an unplanned pregnancy can frequently force a match where none would have happened, she explained, enough parents put up with Abishag since she gets them what they want. The purebloods especially, since their numbers aren't exactly growing. Apparently, Madame Etiquette was having more of an effect on the student body than I'd realized.

And suddenly I saw another reason for the Headmaster's vexation.

The days the memos and "expose" come out, I see an extra tightness around Severus' mouth and the Headmaster's bright smile seems especially brittle. Nothing is said. But everyone knows. I used to think the tension between the two men resulted from the Headmaster's anger at Severus for his failure to stop the newsletters and Severus' frustration with the Headmaster's concern over such a seemingly petty issue. But now...

...or rather then. That day. When I saw the two girls. I knew where they were going and, thanks to Poppy, I had a better idea of Madame's success rate. She was nearly as old as the Headmaster and she certainly wasn't living on family money. True, a Malfoy or a Black would never be seen there. And in truth the Broomall girl didn't need to be there either. Not by class, not by money. And I'm rather surprised that it never occurred to Severus to persuade Malfoy to match her with his little blonde brat. He's another favorite of Severus' – a fact I diligently try to ignore – and I'm sure Malfoy senior would express his appreciation financially if such a proposed match actually took. Something I heard about the girl's inheritance...But of course she has no living parents. So that's probably why she was being more or less dragged along to Madame Etiquette's by the pushy Raby girl who, thanks to her reportedly murky lineage, probably needed more help in finding a potential mate.

He'd seen them too. He'd stopped dead, frozen, as his gaze followed the two girls into the distance. I couldn't interpret the expression on his face but I had a fair idea of what he was thinking. It wasn't the usual fear of possibly having to send a student to the infirmary to correct a potentially catastrophic mistake or, worse, having to send her home with an incomplete education. No. He was thinking: _I'm losing her_.

And then he'd executed one of his razor sharp turns, robes swirling against the wind, and gone straight into the Hog's Head.

Praise Merlin for Madame Etiquette!

I didn't even hesitate.

He's bitingly funny. And, yes, scary. It makes my mind spin to imagine if he was the Headmaster of Hogwarts. He skewers his colleagues _so_ deliciously! I'll never be able to look at Prof. Sinistra with a straight face again. He freely acknowledges his reputation among the students as the "greasy git" and the "bat of the dungeons." He said he prefers to see himself as the dungeon master. I nearly fell of my stool laughing. Then he gave me a rundown of the tortures he'd inflict if he could. By the time he'd finished describing – with terrifying exactitude – how he'd slow-roast Minerva McGonagall in a combination of Muggle kitty litter and catnip, someone was scraping me off the floor. I should have been appalled. I suppose if I were a Hufflepuff I would have run a mile. If I were a Ravenclaw I'd have started questioning him on his sanity. If I were a Gryffindor I'd probably have thrown a drink in his face and walked out on him then and there. And if I were a Slytherin he would have told me nothing because he knows I'd have stored up every bit of data to use as a weapon against him later.

But I'm not any of those.

I come from the four corners of Cornwall. We don't warrant houses, we have corners. I was educated in the Civics and Commerce Corner. Uriah occupied the Crafts and Industry Corner where the aspiring carpenters, stone masons and metallurgists resided. If my hunch is right, I'm sure Madame Etiquette, graduated – generations ago – from the Instructional Protocol and Pedagogy Corner.

We hated the corners. Not the system, the name. The teachers said it was a play on the school name. After all, the motto is _Cornwall stands on the four corners of practice, perseverance, pragmatism and possibility_. Inspiring…it isn't. We students thought it was a bad joke, a cosmic pun on our fates. Hogwarts students get to live in houses. We get shoved into corners.

I don't want to stay in the corner anymore.

So I followed him. And I baited him. And I bedded him. Not all at once. Not even all in the same week. But that was the start.

* * *

**Author's End Notes:**

_* This is NOT canon. According to the HP Lexicon, it costs seven galleons to purchase a wand. I was questioned about this and learned that some fans wondered how Ollivander could afford to live comfortably charging so little. I assume that he couldn't and so must charge more._

_**According to the Lexicon, goblins are not allowed to carry wands. The part about the Goblin Rebellions I just made up. A quick search of the Lexicon didn't appear to tell me what specifically the rebellions were about, especially the one of 1612 which is the one I'm thinking of. _

_***According to the Lexicon, Ron's first wand was a hand-me-down from his older brother Charlie. After the Whomping Willow incident, the perpetually cash-strapped Weasleys got Ron a new wand with funds obtained by winning the Daily Prophet lottery. How convenient, lol. I'm not saying whether I believe that or not but thanks to H for raising the issue so I'd have a chance to make that little mention as factually accurate as possible. Since I've inflated the canon price of the wand to something I believe is more realistic I guess the lottery money would be sorely needed. Don't know if they'll still get to take the trip to Egypt though. _

_Thanks MUCHLY to P and H for their open, accepting and enthusiastic support! Their love of Part 1 completely took me by surprise since I had imagined Demeter Spencer as a throwaway character. I would never have added Part 2 without their encouragement. I don't expect this to go past Part 3 and perhaps an epilogue, but the Muse might have other ideas! _


	3. Chapter 3

**CONFESSIONS OF A CORNWALL GRAD  
By Librasmile**

**Chapter 3**

**Author's Note: **_*sobs* Yes it took over a year to add chapter 3. Mea culpa. Partly it was real life distracting me. Partly it was myself becoming obsessed with creating a whole world and not just another story. What did that include? 1. Creating more wizard world geography. You can't tell me there's just Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. Come on! So I wrote a goofy 3-part series called **Trapped in The Alley**. If you're interested you can check out my Live Journal. I'm Librasmile there as well. 2. I had to build Severus a house. 'Nuff said. 3. __I had to fill in Demeter's history and recreate Severus'. I have a whole still-expanding bible of background material some of which appears here and some of which still has to make a bow in other stories. _

**Author's Thank You's:** _HUGE, **HUGE **thanks to Helena and Penni for embracing my madness and reading draft after draft. I couldn't have gotten this far without you. Feel free to boot my patootie into Chapter 4, lol!_

**Disclaimer:** _You know the drill – With the exception of my gal Demter and assorted secondary original characters, JKR owns 'em. I just mess about with them for a bit – purely profit free of course_.

**Minor Britpick Note: **_I tried to avoid too many Americanisms. And yes I know the counties no longer have to be included in postal addresses and the address included below is probably all kinds of wrong. All I can say is that I actually went to the Royal Mail website to learn about the UK address system and only came away with a headache (Why do your county lines keep moving? ) C'est la vie!_

_

* * *

_

He owns a house.

No, not that squalid little shack in Manchester that he lists as his official residence.

A _house_.

With acreage.

And a pedigree.

And, dare I say it, a bit of architectural dignity.

I was gobsmacked!

Finding out was like going through that Alice girl's looking glass. ( When will Muggles learn not to mess about with magic mirrors? )

I was intrigued.

As my mum always says, a man is never more attractive than when he comes packaged with a house. An over-stuffed Gringotts vault doesn't hurt either. But a fully paid off house trumps all.

But there are houses and then there are Houses_._

The Manchester house isn't generally known among the faculty whom Snape seems to despise. I can't say I blame him. Most of them are a little too jumped up and satisfied with themselves. On the rare occasions when I have to go to their staff room to find one of them, I could swear the temperature drops more than a few degrees the minute I cross the threshold. Merlin forbid if I ever need to borrow a lump of sugar! They'd probably demand a finger as payment. I shudder to think how deep the chill goes when Severus is there. When I dropped a few hints about it to Filch ( who gets the same treatment by the way) he said too many of the faculty probably haven't gotten over being shown up by Severus when he was still just a student. No professor likes to come up short in comparison to one of their pupils, especially not compared to the "raggedy little swot**" **he used to be.

They'd hated him then too, even though he was brilliant. And Snape hates them right back. So I suppose he'd rather die – or better yet dispose of one of THEM – rather than let slip any word of Manchester.

I suspect only the Headmaster and McGonagall know about Manchester. And maybe perhaps Pomfrey in case of medical emergencies. I've never heard any of them mention it. And I can't imagine anyone else on the faculty – with the exception of sweet little Filius, who would never be so rude – having either the standing or the courage to raise the subject.

At the time, though, Filch's comments had left me uneasy. The old man had been here when Severus was a student and I sensed there was a lot about Snape that he wasn't telling me. Why he told me as much as he did probably had more to do with the Goblin brandy I used – with Filch's blessing – to spike his tea than with any fear of breaching Snape's confidences. I was pretty sure I wouldn't get any more out of him.

_Raggedy_? Mr. Darkly Immaculate, himself?

No his hair isn't perfect. Nor are his teeth. But these are minor easily correctible things. They're small parts of his very impressive whole which he holds erect with pride.

And yet…

It doesn't take a genius to see that at some point, someone, somewhere, perhaps someone near and dear to him, had convinced him he was ugly.

I hadn't realized at first. When I'd first arrived here, I'd simply registered him as this sweeping, darkly majestic force, the thundercloud to the headmaster's genial lemon-drop sun.

Yes his skin is sallow. Not pocked, or pitted, or scarred, just sallow. And not all the time. Sometimes he's simply pale, which is hardly a shock in someone who spends most of his life in the deep dark of the dungeons. But if you pay attention, you'll see his color shift with the seasons. In August, when the faculty members return, what is tanned and rested in them is sallow in him. By December, he's pale again. You can hardly blame the man for being a poor tanner. Otherwise _**Witch Weekly's**_ style aurors would have chucked me into Azkaban long ago.

And no his teeth are not perfect. To hear the students tell it, he's a snaggle-toothed, crooked-mouth, mess. In actuality, the bottom row of his teeth are slightly misaligned. Whether this is congenital or the result of stress-induced teeth grinding, I couldn't tell. But by a happy accident, his upper row is perfectly straight. It overlaps enough to almost completely obscure his bottom row, so you can't see that imperfection unless you're literally staring down his throat. And if you need to do that BE FOREWARNED – I suspect he bites.

And his teeth aren't perfectly white either. He smokes. Clove cigarettes. I'd wager any amount of galleons _that_ habit _is _stress induced. When his colleagues come back from the summer tanned with sparkling teeth, he comes back sallow-skinned but with perfectly acceptable ivory-colored teeth. By the Halloween Feast he's becoming paler and his teeth dingier. At least during the day. Catch him in the morning and his teeth are bloody brilliant. By the end of the day, he's back where he started. I suspect he fights a neverending battle between what I'd estimate is a pack a day habit and his tooth whitener. I haven't come across a wizard-made tooth whitener yet that can't handle ordinary food or cigarette stains, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's more than just cloves in those fags.

But if it keeps him from murdering the little beasts, I say smoke 'em if you got 'em.

I wonder if he stocks up for the year before the start of term feast. Hogsmeade's merchants carry tobacco but they aren't exactly known for selling exotic goods. And scoring a side trip to Knockturn Alley during school terms just for a pack of fags just inst' worth it. Then again he could have someone supplying him. Several other faculty members smoke as well, especially Hooch. Some days that woman reeks like chimney! But I've never caught the same deep, spicy aroma wafting from them as I smell on him.

His hair is its own little saga.

I've heard the nasty little remarks about the so-called "greasy git" from students and, worse, the faculty – as if any of _them _had the goods to be crowned sexy sorcerer of the year. All behind his back of course. Not one of them has got the guts to say it to his face. Oh I've heard them muttering about him under their breath just loud enough for him to hear. They're so chuffed with themselves they don't even notice I can hear them too. Or maybe it just doesn't matter to them. He never acknowledges the comments. But I've seen the way his mouth tightens and his shoulders pull back ever so slightly as if he's willing himself to face down an attack. But he remains silent. Oh, he'll tear a loose-lipped student's house points to shreds if he overhears _them_, but he leaves the faculty alone. With the students, it's a matter of disrespecting authority. With his colleagues… I suppose he thinks it's beneath his dignity to even acknowledge them with a response.

But it bothers him.

It took me awhile to figure out _that _too.

I didn't believe it at first.

I mean he's so proud. He stands like a prince – the Machiavellian version, perhaps, but still a prince. It must infuriate his peers because there seems to be an unspoken rule that only the headmaster can adopt anything like a royal presence. Severus does it without thinking. I'm not sure he'd know how to stop even if he wanted to. It isn't in him to slouch or shuffle or amble. He swoops. He stalks. He never stoops – unless he's snatching up a hapless student. I think his pride amuses the Headmaster.

And the way he _moves_… I don't have the words to describe him.

I once spent a long, frustrating – sexually and otherwise – night, poring through Madame Pince's sadly limited literature collection, trying to find some word, some author, _someone _who had conjured up the words that could describe his physical grace. The closest I came was Edgar Allen Poe – how he wound up in the mug-lit section I'll _never _know – and T.S. Eliot. And even they weren't enough. All I got out of that night was a raging headache, dark dreams of "nevermore" and the realization that I wanted to be seduced by the wasteland.

And, possessing all _this_, he thinks he's ugly.

I guess I just don't see him the way other people do.

It's as if other people are determined to only see him in pieces.

It's shamefully easy to do.

He's SO intense that his energy actually seems to twist reality around him so that people can only see a distorted version of him, like a trick of the light.

Turned one way, he's all sharp, sour angles and seething anger. The Grim Reaper made snarling flesh.

Turned the other way, he's smoky, seductive shadows and sweetly, stinging allure.

Seeing him as only one or the other is like seeing him through one eye and then the other. Sooner or later you wind up cockeyed or half blind.

And yet his colleagues never seem to catch on.

Most of them seem to forget they actually have two eyes when it comes to him. To them he's forever frozen in mid-snarl. And the tragedy of it is that they get a sort of petty revenge on him. Because he believes them. It's as if, on some level, he believes their resentment and fear is his just due.

And THAT'S what I could not understand. Even with that less than savory history of his WHY would he believe them?

Well it wasn't as if I could walk up to His Immaculate Darkness and ask. I didn't even have the courage to ask Filch. If it were anyone else, I'm sure Filch would fill me in. But I could just imagine the kind of threats, spoken or unspoken, upon which Snape would condition sharing any confidences with the old caretaker. Why Filch had told me as much as he had previously probably had more to do with the Goblin brandy I'd used beforehand – with Filch's blessing – to spike his tea. I was pretty sure I wouldn't get any more out of him. Besides, asking Filch, a defenseless squib, to risk running afoul of Snape was wrong. Not that I could defend myself any better if I collided with Snape's dark – or rather _darker_ – side. Still it was the principle of the thing. Last time I had no idea I was asking Filch to breach Severus' confidence and luck and brandy were on my side. This time I was on my own.

So I took myself off for a quiet little side trip to Manchester.

After sneaking off for a look at it I could see why.

It was…it was…

It was a wary walk down cracked, litter-strewn Muggle pavements, gripping my mother's wand tight as I passed Muggles who could have been right at home in Knockturn Alley. It was a stroll past rows of narrow, aging homes packed as tightly together as knuckles in a fist. It was a jarring stop before a house with grimy, greasy brick and crumbling mortar; a dulled rust-coated wrought-iron railing; clouded window panes framed by splintering window sashes and flaking paint; all huddled under an ashen sky and backed against a field of trash and debris choked weeds...

I didn't want to believe it.

He's the Head of Slytherin House – Hogwarts' proudest, no matter what the Gryffindors might say. All the houses have their share of heirs and spares. But he rides herd over the spoiled spawn of the proudest, wealthiest purebloods. If ever there was a nest of vipers, er brats who not only demand that the world and everyone in it be organized to THEIR convenience, but who also routinely scheme to get the upper hand over their head of house, it's in Slytherin House.

Of course they fail. And when the accumulated weight of Prof. Snape's multiple, gleefully vindictive and, Filch assures me, richly deserved detentions crushes even their proud spirits, they finally bow their necks to the inevitable. For the duration of their stay at Hogwarts, Prof. Snape's word is law. And since it's inconceivable that such pureblood aristocrats could bow to anything less than their superior, I always assumed that at the very least he'd come from the same elevated tier.

Not…this.

Manchester.

The mills.

MUGGLE mills.

The proud head of Slytherin – with his hauteur, his regal bearing, his cultured syllables, and his immaculately tailored robes, the man who sweeps past us as if he were the walking, talking avatar of Machiavelli's Prince – sprang forth from Muggle mills?

Can you imagine if these brats KNEW?

Can you imagine if their PARENTS knew?

No wonder he never mentions it.

I'm surprised he doesn't have it under _fidelius_ or at least a good, strong notice-me-not charm. Then again he lists it in his personnel file, so I suppose that would have defeated the purpose.

Still I would have expected a wizard neighborhood at least.

Diagon and Knockturn Alleys are much too commercial to make good residential space. But the dozens of secondary and tertiary streets branching off of them make lovely neighborhoods. Parsh Alley certainly can't match the prestige of Diagon Alley but it made a decent enough home for my sister, my mother, my granddad and me. True, mum had to work at the custom house down in Navigation Alley, and there was that row of shady Goblin pawn shops at our cross street, Thrift Alley. But the Goblins kept order, and besides, all of that was at the far end of our long, winding street. It might as well have been another world to us kids.

Our block of converted Victorian-era flats actually enclosed a long inner courtyard that we all took full advantage of. The neighbors' association claimed it and cultivated it into bright rows of daisy and daffodils, marigolds and roses. Every season, within the walls, we had lush little harvests of tomatoes, strawberries, green beans, turnips and cabbages. They coaxed apple and pear trees into giving up their fruit. And they threatened us with murder as we chased through around them nicking samples as we played hide and seek.

Yes, we lived in London. But we lived surprisingly well. We certainly cut into our grocery bills. And thanks to what magic our parents could conjure up, we kids had space and sunlight and trees and grass, fresh food and fresh air– all safe and secure from Muggles.

Not this…how could he grow up here?

The air itself felt leaden and it was hard to imagine anything escaping the gravitational pull of that place. Is _this_ what Muggles mean when they say "toxic half-life?"

Is THIS what gives him his crackling, sulfuric aura? Is THIS why he believes he's ugly?Because he believes this toxicity is not just skin deep but in his blood?

If nothing else, I think I can understand his secrecy and ferocity better. If he can't be loved – and to convince someone that they're ugly is to convince them that they can't be loved – then at least he can damn well make sure he's _feared_. At the very least it keeps the faculty from trying to devour him.

And his closed-mouth stance on his origins is the only thing that stands between him and parents like Lucius Malfoy discovering his origins and killing him stone dead – or at least having him fired, which in _my_ tax bracket amounts to the same thing. Even my mother would turn up her nose if she knew. True we lived on my grandfather's charity. But it was a neat and tidy charity. It was _respectable _charity. No pureblood or his child would ever tolerate jumping to the orders of such a low-born, smog-stained upstart.

And I can't have him. Not if he comes from this. I have to do better, not worse. Yes, we need the magical power. But we also need the social protection. I can't risk losing Uriah just to move down in the world. It's not just me here.

Mum can't work forever. True, I'm out of the house. And my sister Daphne has finally – praise Merlin! – gotten a wedding date out of that killjoy boyfriend of hers, Cadmus. But that's only because he demanded she give up a solid position as junior seamstress at Titania's Bridal Shop in Silk Alley to help him start his furniture-making business. She told him she'd do it…eventually.

It'll be more like never if I have anything to do with it. We're not the kind of family that can afford to start – and most likely _lose_ – a business. Neither is Cadmus'. And they'll wind up right back in the flat with Mum, stressing themselves and her over mounting debts.

No. I can't have that.

Which means I can't have Severus.

Because in addition to – yet again! – steering Daphne away from trouble, I need to marry enough money to clean up the mess she'll eventually let Cadmus drag her into.

At least, that's what I thought before I saw his OTHER house.

I left Manchester with a heavy heart that day, my hopes crashing around me.

I spent an entire fortnight disappointed and forlorn before the knut dropped.

Malfoy _knew_.

I hadn't considered, not then, not until days after seeing Severus' dirty little Manchester secret, that Malfoy HAD to know. He sits on the Board of Governors. He'd gone to school with Snape, for Merlin's sake. And he has access to almost everything in the personnel files.

And yet he'd approved Severus' appointment to head Slytherin House. He let his precious heir jump to Severus' orders. He kept up a more than cordial relationship. What few comments I heard him make to and about Severus were all complimentary.

Malfoy knew and _approved_.

What in Merlin's name could explain _that_?

And _that's _what triggered my memory.

I went diving through my files to pull out the latest letter from Gringotts. There. Dated the same day I came back my foolish hopes shattered by the desolate reality of what I'd seen in Manchester which was why I'd missed it. My eyes skimmed the document and I let out a shuddering breath. This was it. _This _was my clue to explaining the disconnect between Severus Snape growing up in working class Manchester squalor and Lucius Malfoy, pureblood supreme, placing his precious little son and heir under Snape's care.

I felt a hopeful flutter in my chest and my hand actually shook as I read the parchment.

It was an accident. My finding out about it - that is, the information being revealed to me. I still would have overlooked it but for my pondering the hierarchical mismatch of his origins and his position as Head of Slytherin.

Who says accounting is boring?

You can uncover more secrets tracking someone's money than you can tracking who goes into and out of their bedroom.

That certainly hold true for Uriah and me. I have never been to bed with Uriah. I know he'd like that to change. And I'd be willing to let him – if it weren't for Snape. Not that I've tipped my hand about that to Uriah. Yes, I suppose you could say he's trying to court me - relentlessly. Sometimes he's like devil's snare - w_hen _he's in town. But we're not committed to each other so there's no shame in me hedging my bets.

I may not know exactly what Uriah and I have but I still know everything else about him. I know where he was born, where he grew up, and what schools he attended BEFORE AND AFTER Cornwall. I know his parents' names and THEIR parents' names. I know the worth of what he stands to inherit. And – unbeknownst to him – exactly how much he makes every year.

I know entirely too little about Snape despite the Manchester revelation. And he works hard to keep it that way. Still. Handing the faculty their galleons every month confers a distinct advantage.

I know exactly how much he's earned at Hogwarts for the 5 years I've been here AND for the years I wasn't.

I know how much he spends – officially – on potions ingredients, cauldrons, jars and what have you. I know the budget for Slytherin House – always submitted on time and with no unexplainable or unjustifiable shortfalls. Gryffindor by contrast is frequently and defiantly over budget. Although more apologetic about it, Hufflepuff is the same – usually because they've loaned funds to Gryffindor. I refuse to even acknowledge Prof. Flitwick's latest money-saving mathematical matrix. Cornwall taught Numerology NOT Artihmancy. And trying to decode abstract Ravenclaw ramblings just gives me a headache.

I know the worth of Severus Manchester house – 3000 galleons on the open market. My grandad's flat is worth more than that. A decent wizard house costs at least 10,000.

And, because I deposit his pay there every month, I know the number of Snape's Gringotts vault.

THAT'S how I found out about his other house.

The goblins, bless their steel-bolted, tight-fisted little hearts, screwed up.

It doesn't happen often. In fact, it's SO rare I'd had half a mind to check and see if that perpetually pissed Trelawney hadn't actually sobered up and seen it any case, I grabbed onto it like a lifeline.

Again, I know Severus' Gringotts vault number. The reason I know it is because the house heads are paid differently than the rest of the faculty. Ordinary faculty, like Muggle Studies professor Charity Burbage or Astronomy's Prof. Sinistra receive galleons in hand to spend, secure or owl post as they please. The house heads and the masters however – Charms Master, Potions Master, Transfiguration Mistress and Defense Against the Dark Arts Instructor – are paid first and have their galleons directly deposited into their vaults.

Everybody knows this.

What is NOT commonly known is that each house head has a letter of credit sent from Hogwarts on their behalf to Gringotts. Sealed by the Headmaster himself, each letter allows house heads to purchase whatever they need for their classes or house expenses from whichever wizard merchant they need to patronize. Once Dumbledore has signed them, I send the letters myself. Gringotts keeps them on file for merchants to reference as needed and of course Gringotts keeps me abreast of the purchases so I can reconcile Hogwarts' accounts.

During a house head's probationary period, Gringotts sends quarterly requests for confirmation that the letters are still valid. Once a head is past that period, Gringotts send them every 6 months. Once they have been here 5 years, the requests are only sent annually and practically rubber stamped.

That doesn't mean they have free rein however – although you'd never know it when it comes to Hooch and her Quidditch ( and since the deputy head mistress is her partner in crime I don't have much to say on THAT score ). Hogwarts is NOT a charity. And to keep the house heads honest, each faculty member who can do so must submit their most recent Wizard Inland Revenue form with the initial letter in the off chance – although not necessarily all that off when it comes to the DADA instructors – that the Headmaster must discipline them for financial malfeasance. For the same reason, they must also disclose ownership of any property that could be attached in the event of a lawsuit.

I know all about Minerva's share in the rambling old house she inherited along with her sister as well as her sole ownership of a sunny little seaside cottage. I know all about Pomona's relative infested farmhouse in the Cotswolds and Filius' Left Bank love nest. So, as I said, of course I know about Snape's house in Manchester. And, like clockwork, that address appeared in Gringotts' annual request for confirmation of the letter of credit renewal.

Except this year.

THIS year the address read:

**Raven's Wake  
Old Grove Walk  
Augury Lane  
Quilton, Yewberry  
Ravenham-on-Wode, Yorkshire RV3 1YD **

I'd sent the approval before I'd even noticed the address change. Or the quantitative difference – 374,400 galleons.

It was wondering about Malfoy's support of a Manchester slum-raised wizard that made me go back and look. I suppose the change had made an impression in the back of my mind, and, like a clock chiming, had gone off while I was pondering the paradox of a Muggle slum-raised wizard coming to head the pureblood reserve of Slytherin House.

As I said I have NO idea how the goblins could have made such an error. And I knew it wouldn't be long before they caught it. What the consequences would be I didn't know. It's not as if I wasn't already bound by my witch's oath not to reveal any personal financial information. Nor was I inclined to.

But the worth of the property listed was over 10 times that of Spinners End. The goblins are notorious for their fiduciary controls. And the huge quantitative difference would generate an automatic investigation. ( I found that out when I was studying for my ill-fated Gringotts interview.) Which wasn't good for me since I had confirmed the renewal without noticing the error myself.

In the best case scenario, the goblins would send a corrected request along with a sharply worded communiqué insulting my name, my common wizard lineage and my meager magical prowess. After all I sent the erroneous request back with Hogwarts' approval. I'm sure the way they'd see it, it was my fiduciary responsibility to the school to catch _their _error. So in their minds, _I _was the guilty party, not them. Without a doubt, they would threaten to ask Dumbledore to sack me from my job. But since the Headmaster had more important things on his mind – Quidditch scores, the price of lemon drops, and the most efficient way to give Gryffindor enough points to steal the house cup AGAIN this year – I doubt they'd even get a reply.

And more importantly, Severus would never know.

The WORST case scenario would see my body buried under the dungeons in the off chance I managed to somehow break the _Obliviate_ I'm sure Snape would hex me with after he finished reading the Goblins' update on the situation.

And no I'm not exaggerating.

I mean what have we heard of this property? Nothing. Not a word. Not a whisper.

Clearly he values his privacy more than his property.

Which meant I was probably taking my life – or at the very least my well being – into my hands going out to see it.

Yes I was checking up on him again. I admit it.

But in for a knut…

* * *

It's located in the Yorkshire dales on the edge of a tanglewood approximately 50 miles from the city of Ravenham and half that distance from Yewberry Village.

I decided to floo from Hogsmeade to Yewberry. I didn't tell anyone where I was going but I didn't hide it either. I didn't have to. Like towns all over England, Yewberry had a sizable wizard community hidden peacefully and discretely within it. I stepped carefully out of the fireplace in the storeroom of what turned out to be Wodeson's Medicinals – the local chemist-cum-potions brewer – and slipped out down the narrow, Romanesque alley behind it.

As I came around the front and merged into pedestrian traffic, I could see that, as with the Leaky Cauldron, the shop had been treated to a powerful notice-me-not charm to repel the passing Muggles. And when I took the time to suppress my magical senses and view the building as if I were a Muggle, I could see the structure stood as a boarded up stone derelict. I frowned. Come to think of it, the shop had been empty when I'd arrived and the only light to breach the shadows had been the sunlight piercing the panes of the dust-coated windows. That was different. Usually a floo stop was occupied as a matter of course if only so that someone could report any problems to the Floo Commission.

Then again, Yewberry WAS a bit off the busier floo circuits. I mean it seemed to have a full enough population. There were open shops and taverns, light street traffic, people buzzing along in those Muggle cars. It wasn't crowded but it was busy. Still, it lacked much of those odd, beeping, electricky things the more modern Muggle cities had. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the wizards simply floo'd straight from their homes into Ravenham proper. Why make a stop to a slow backwater village whose most recent claim to fame – according to the town square monument - was the bumper yewberry harvest of 1711, when you could hop straight through to the city? At the very least you could find a wider and undoubtedly comfier range of food and shelter options.

I swear it took 3 weeks for that Yorkshire chill to leech from my bones. You'd think I'd be used to it after 5 years of working in sunless Scotland.

It didn't stop me though.

I pulled my mackinaw tighter, cast the strongest warming charm I could produce andrented a bicycle.

The bicycle shop owner had warned me that the estate was a full 20-odd miles down Augury Lane. There would be no rest stops along the way until I got to the tiny hamlet of Quilton. I thanked him without blinking an eye, took my rental and set off.

Once I was out of view, I whipped open my Ministry of Magic approved version of Baedeker. There. Two miles out of Yewberry was an old fairy road. I remember granddad telling us about those. He'd been sent to the country during the last war. Portkeys were strictly rationed. And the wizards he'd lived with were so rural they didn't have floo access. They'd used the old fairy roads instead.

Back at Cornwall, we studied fairy roads in magical cartography. It was an elective for me, a requirement for Uriah. I had taken it just to keep him company. The professors figured if you were going to spend your days shipping goods back and forth or figuring out where to locate magical rooms you'd better know your magical geography.

In the days of the Old Ways, taking a fairy road would have been suicide. You'd never come out again. Or if you did return, 50 years could have gone by and everyone you knew and loved would be dead.

Nowadays though, with the gates between the realms sealed, all the fairy roads looped back to sites in our world. So all I had to do was pick up the fairy road and keep going for a few miles. In 20 minutes, I'd be in Quilton, 5 minutes from my destination.

Just because I hadn't needed to hide or mention my destination didn't mean I hadn't arrived with a good cover story. I had a thick woolen blanket, a full picnic basket and the requisite thermos of hot tea – generously fortified with a portion of Goblin brandy – all packed with my best featherweight charm. I also had my sketch book and my copy of the _**The**_ _**Evening Craft's**_ late edition. Although too many of us might not admit it, we're as eager as the next Muggle to visit the manor houses and explore the ancestral haunts of the past and present privileged class. So I decided to disappear into the throng of weekend day trippers stopping for a picnic lunch between sketches of the old piles. If the curious – or downright nosy – still had to ask me where I was going, well they were as hopeless as Longbottom and as worthy of a reply.

For a moment, I'd actually wished I'd had Filch with me. His crusty, craggy personality would have fit perfectly with the rugged ups and downs of the hills and dales I travelled. Yewberry is just outside the national park, Wode's Wood, an ancient forest that had watched the Romans, Vikings and Saxons come and go. Apparently, the Normans hadn't made much of a dent either for all their infamous harrowing of the North. The Wood's claim to fame, an abundance of ancient yew tress, still stood unmolested by any but Mother Nature. One had even tumbled its way across a thin branch of the Wode River, forming a natural, if treacherous bridge.

It was while cycling past one old yew – a tree leaning so dangerously that it seemed determined to follow its brother's fate – that I finally came across it.

As I rounded a bend, the view of it resolved before me as I wandered off the bike path, stumbled through the brush and undergrowth and parted tree branches.

It was…_definitely _no Spinners End.

I gasped as I felt the tingle of the magic prickling along my skin, insinuating itself underneath, invigorating my bones. Deliberately, I breathed in, deep. I closed my eyes, savoring the "taste." Now _this_ was magic.

Muggleborns don't understand the concept of magical estates, any more than they understand the concept of deep, true magic.

They knew it once, back before the Statute of Secrecy, before the Normans came, before the Romans left. They worshiped what no modern wizard with any sense would deign to call gods and had rituals as powerful as any spells _we_ could conjure. And there was no need to live apart, no need for us to cringe and hide.

But when the karasti came, that changed.

Their priests began a campaign of amnesia for them and annihilation for us and we were slaughtered.

Hogwarts doesn't tell its students that.

Practically no one in the Ministry does either.

The official story is that the Statute of Secrecy was enacted to protect MUGGLES.

Bollocks.

The karasti were burning us alive.

Their priests had POWER.

Their chanting and holy books, their candles and Mass, their bells and _faith_ beat back wizards and dark creatures alike. Their ceremonies and prayers drained the power of our spells and closed the other world gateways – our escape routes – all across the land.

We were hemmed in and hunted from one end of Britain to the other. And we were facing extinction.

It was the great estates – and, like it or not, the purebloods who owned them – that saved us.

They were the strongest of us, the ones who still had the power to hold out against the priests. And their estates became our bolt holes, our siege castles. They protected us.

I know the purebloods can be a petty, condescending, greedy and downright racist lot. But they – those with the great estates at least – are also custodians of some of the most powerful magical artifacts in Britain.

The Ministry prefers we forget THAT too.

But quite a few of us remember.

At Cornwall, they'd told us straight out how much power the Muggles once had. You'd think they'd fear the Ministry's retribution, but they were quite open about it. I suppose since we have so little power – wizardry's permanent second-class citizens so to speak – that the ministry assumes it doesn't matter what WE know. After all, who with any power is going to listen to US anyway?

And if there's one flaw the wizard world has, it's arrogance. No one would want to believe us. It's too terrifying. Because if the Muggles ever came to remember the power they once had over us, what's to stop the burning from happening again?

And they wonder why You-Know-Who managed to do as well as he did…

Each manor house has some magical artifact or site it stewards and protects. Or at it least it once did. That's how all the great manors began. Back before the priests and later the wizards themselves closed the gateways between the realms, the pureblood family that began the line formed a covenant with a daimon. They were charged to hold the site as a sacred, protected space and given a magical object as proof of the pledge. The more powerful the daimon, the more powerful the object, the more protected the space.

The Blacks apparently began with a pact with the ravenous spirit of Black Hill, inspiration for the infamous – and homicidal – Black Hunt.

The Longbottoms were guardians of the deceptively placid and deadly depths of Longbottom Lake.

And the Malfoys are rumored to have more than one which probably made them an irresistible prize for the Dark Lord. What they are nobody knows but what else could explain those idiots' relentless hold on power?

Not every landed pureblood family managed to hold onto their legacies, though. Witness the Weasleys.

But such artifacts generated the power that shielded hundreds of us. We shivered in their custodians' dungeons, attics, stables and other hiding places as their keepers confounded the inquisitors into leaving. Or battled them.

There's a reason Hogwarts used to have a dueling club. And a reason that the purebloods were the loudest in protesting its removal. The Headmaster finally managed to remove a black mark on his form with them when he reinstituted it last year. Though Gilderoy Lockhart's involvement spoke volumes.

It's also the reason Hogwarts is in a CASTLE. Again, the Muggleborns don't understand. From what I can tell, they never question it. They just seem to think it's part and parcel of the magic they read about in their fairy tales. I've read some of those stories. They're woefully lacking in the details of what dealing with the Fae was REALLY like. How lives shortened and body parts tended to go missing with each encounter, each bargain made. They seem to expect glass slippers under every bed and pumpkin coaches around every corner. I've never had the courage to ask him, but I'd love to know just how many first years ask Hagrid where he keeps his bean stalk.

They seem to miss the fact that a castle is a FORTRESS. Hogwarts is the safest magical place in Britain this side of Gringotts. And it never occurs to them to wonder why their school is housed in a fortress.

And with the Headmaster unwilling to exorcise Binns from his position teaching history of magic, they'll never know.

It'll never occur to them that the Founders weren't a bunch of dotty old teachers but WARRIORS hell bent on preserving our besieged bloodlines for centuries to come.

Binns will never tell them about the pureblood estates from Wales to Cornwall, from England to Scotland that secreted whole wizarding villages for years until the danger passed. How pureblood money and magic financed resettlement for thousands of wounded families and traumatized communities.

Unless they read the right sources like the _**The**_ _**Evening Craft**_ – founded by a Cornwall alum, of course – or talk to the right people like the fellows of the Pythagorean College, they'll never hear the real story. Merlin knows they'll never set foot in Cornwall.

All they'll hear is purebloods, Slytherins and You-Know-Who equal bad and Mugglelovers, Gryffindors and Dumbledore equal good. They'll never learn about the deeper reasons WHY.

They'll never know the truth.

They'll never witness THIS.

To Muggle eyes it would be a desolate ruin of crumbling, dark grey castellan brick and stone, overrun with climbing ivy.

To MY eyes it radiates with the bittersweet beauty of abandoned magic. I could feel the magic beckoning to me like a hand held out, inviting someone, just one living sentient thing to cross its threshold and bring it to life again.

It wasn't a castle. It wasn't one of the palatial mansions either. It was what Uriah would call that "curious architectural amalgam, a medieval fortified manor." It was built of stone and had battlements. But it lacked a moat. And if it had a portcullis it was raised. Nor was it as tall as I'd expected. I counted 4 stories at the most and the last story resulted from square, strategically placed towers rising above the stout walls.

I don't know what I expected. Perhaps a sedate, genteel manor house such as what housed Cornwall. Perhaps an ornate, Palladian spectacle as shown in the recent _**Witch Weekly**_ spread depicting Narcissa Malfoy's latest interior design for Malfoy Manor.

Whatever it was, this wasn't it.

For better or worse those houses were clear products of civilization.

THIS house was…wild. Feral. Its dark grey stone and smaller, nimbler dimensions gave the sense of a crouched, untamed creature, hidden in the briar and brush, waiting for its next master or its next meal. Partly this was due to its medieval walls. Uriah, with his architectural expertise, would call it late Gothic or Perpendicular. It was a style that had the sweep of the great cathedrals without the dizzyingly otherworldly pointed spires. Perpendicular buildings like the Muggle churches of York Minister and Canterbury Cathedral manage to reach out to heaven without letting their feet leave the ground. They felt anchored to earth, like mountains or deep tree roots. They were strong, immovable buildings. And, like any Viking-era monastery or Hundred Years' War era castle, the house looked ready to withstand a siege. More: some indefinable quality gave it a spirit, made it seem quiescent yet still alive. It felt as if the slumbering stones themselves would waken and pounce on you if you weren't quite ready, came too close. The grim color of the stones, the severe structural lines and the shrouded lancet windows lent it an air of monastic melancholy – like a fallen priest still hoping for absolution.

Sheltered behind ancient yews, I stared, frozen by its austere grandeur.

This was no mere manor house.

It's fortress like structure, somehow redolent of both monastic abstention and Roman decadence, felt so much like Severus that it held me spellbound. It was if he stood naked before me, sans robes, sans sneer, yet clothed in impervious hauteur with all of his ancestors at his back.

It took a moment to recall how to breathe.

So THIS was what he was.

It fit.

It squared with my original notion of him as one of the privileged purebloods. And yet…

How did he go from _this_ to Spinners End? Was Spinners End just a ruse to keep the curious – all right nosey, like myself – from looking elsewhere? Specifically here? And _how_ was it possible he hadn't been required to list it on his original property disclosure? I've seen the original paperwork. It's not there.

I desperately wanted to get closer.

But when I retrieved my bicycle and started cycling closer, I yelped as a burst of wand fire exploded at my front tire. Before I had a chance to blink I was careening off the road and into the woods. I bumped and bumbled along the knobby forest floor. I was too battered by low-handing and thankfully spindly tree branches to have enough breath to cry out again. Until the branches abruptly cleared and I realized I was heading straight into the stream!

I screamed – an embarrassingly screechy sound that was abruptly cut off in mid-yowl as I felt myself yanked back into mid-air. Momentarily stunned, I hung like a rag doll as bicycle, picnic basket and sketchbook went flying then splashing into the water.

"Oh pardon me!" a voice said before I was gently lowered to earth. Still stunned, I only stared as a spry, middle-aged, average-looking man trotted past me to the water's edge. With a few flicks of his wand my belongings were brought to shore and dried in a thrice. The bent bicycle took a bit more work. But he soon had that as right as rain again. Good thing too since I would have had to pay for the damage and I only had wizard money left.

Swiftly, he trotted back up to me, my things levitating along behind him. "So sorry about that," he chirped. "Thought you were a Muggle. We don't get a lot of wizard folk on bicycles up here."

I glared at him.

Which obviously had no effect on him because he gave me the grand tour. By way of apology.

With all the eagerness of an underappreciated sheep dog, he awkwardly bounded up the ridge, me in tow, to give me the only tour he could.

From the higher position, he pointed out the medieval layout including 10-foot thick walls, crenellated battlements, the main entrance with its Gothic archway, the inner courtyard, the chapel and the out buildings. From the distance, it could have been a compact monastery. No wonder Snape preferred the dungeons. They were as Spartan and severe as his home.

Then my little friend gave me another possible reason for Severus' preference.

The estate had been confiscated. Twenty years ago, at the end of the war with You Know Who, the ministry had seized it and hadn't let go of it since.

I nodded as I felt a chill go down my spine. I could only imagine why. Snippets of Craft headlines and articles about Death Eater raids flitted briefly through my mind.

It was his job to guard the place, my keeper prattled on proudly. With a little auror help, of course, he added. The aurors patrolled weekly, always on a different day and were a bit wand happy, he explained. So he thought it best to get me out of range.

He himself wasn't an auror, he admitted.

Bless his heart, he was a sheriff.

He volunteered that info so easily I thought he _must_ be joking.

Officially, the sheriffs are magical law enforcement officers. Unofficially, they're the Cornwall version of aurors – second-class citizens. Or, to put it more bluntly, second-rate aurors. They fall under what is laughingly referred to as the jurisdiction of the Court of Archaisms and Anomalies, also known as "Ark and A."

NO ONE respects Ark and A.

And no one wants to work for them either.

At Cornwall, the students in the Land Rites and Wizard Law course dismissed it as the place where careers went to die. A Land Rites major I dated once explained why. There are 2 reasons he said: the archaisms and the anomalies.

The anomalies referred to magical offenses that were too small for Azkaban, too big to ignore, and too bizarre to explain even to ordinary wizard folk.

Archaisms – a rather forgiving word - referred to the type of people who usually committed the anomalies.

Those people were…_special_.

Nobody wants to admit to having a crazy aunt stuffed in the attic. You feed her. You check on her to make sure she won't be able to burn down the place while you sleep. And you add additional locks as necessary. But you never ever admit she exists. Not to your neighbors. Not to your fiancé. Only when your betrothed has said the vows, sired or birthed your child or in some other way sealed their fate as an irrevocable member of the tribe – only when they can't escape do you lift the veil and let them in on the family shame.

The archaisms are the wizard world's version of the crazy aunt.

They are the hags, the hedge witches, the root doctors, the medicine men, the shamans, the covens, all the reprobates and resistors who refused to accept the Wizard Enlightenment, also known as the Rule of the Wand. Initially, they wouldn't even accept the Statute of Secrecy. Because they had little or no use for wands and clung to the old rituals most people called them the "ritch witches."

They refused to give up on their high or low ceremonial magic and kept to the worship of the so-called gods. Beltane was the worst. They persisted in celebrating it in the Old Way with nary a contraceptive charm in sight. So of course they created hordes of magical children with dubious heritage and equally doubtful inheritance rights. And because we haven't yet descended to the point of actually living invisible for 24 hours a day, the Muggle world could clearly see and hear these children who, inconveniently enough had no baptismal certificates. Add in the fact that Beltane rites could be recognized as an Old form of marriage and the Ministry had a nightmare on its hands.

Well of course the ritch witches had to be brought to heel. If they had kept on openly practicing their rites and other oddities, drawing attention to themselves, and by extension, us, their stubborn backwardness would have brought the Muggles down on our heads again.

So the sheriff's office was created. They were sent in to flush them out. They forced "conversion," if you will, on those who surrendered, imprisoned those who wouldn't, and put the fear of Merlin into those who were too minor to trouble with. And they were very, VERY efficient. Nowadays, you couldn't get a hedge witch to say "boo." And good luck finding a hag. Oh some of them have survived helping out the midwives. That kind of Old birthing magic is always useful. But the hardcore hags, the nearly feral ones who wouldn't have hesitated, however foolishly, to curse You-Know-Who, they're gone forever.

The sheriffs did such a good job, the Ministry snatched up most of them when it created the Auror Division. What was left…

A member of what was left nearly pitched me into the drink. So there you go.

Next, the Ministry tackled a knottier problem: land rights. We'd already put our foot on the neck of various dark and other creatures – vampires, werewolves, centaurs, giants – by trimming back their hunting grounds and habitats. Now we had to secure ours.

As I said all the great estates began as covenants with a local daimon. Land titles were based on those covenants. Well, the battle with the karasti had closed so many of the magical gateways that, aside from ghosts and poltergeists, it was damned near impossible to communicate or summon a spirit without resorting to powerful dark magic. This tossed land titles into complete chaos! When the smoke from the battles had cleared it was discovered that the purebloods who'd fought for us couldn't even prove they owned their own homes.

Pandemonium erupted.

Purebloods suddenly found ownership of their ancestral homes challenged by any and all comers. Even Muggleborns! And they were left with no legal leg to stand on.

Well of course these battle-hardened wizards weren't going to stand for that. So, sometime back in the 900s – or was it the 1200s? I can never remember which – the Ministry created Ark and A.

They should have just called it the clearance sale court.

That court was never really meant to resolve anything – not in substance. It was created to give a legal gloss to the purebloods' brute force retaking of their land. Most of that was accomplished by the 1300s. After that, the court lost all purpose and usefulness. Nowadays, just like careers, cases go there to die. Everybody knows it, especially the plaintiffs and defendants. The fastest way to get out of there is to bribe your way through. Paying the clerks works best. They control the judges' dockets and have next to no legal reputation to defend so they're more easily corrupted. If you have a case before that court and your lawyer doesn't advise you to try a bribe or a little blackmail get another lawyer. Or prepare to spend YEARS in Ark and A hell.

It's an open scandal.

After a particularly scathing series of exposes in the _**Daily Prophet**_ back when the paper actually gave a damn, the Ministry broke down and created the Department of Land Rites.

Gail Coventree runs it now. She's Hogwarts bred, a Hufflepuff. But she's no Ministry toady. Instead of just vomiting up whatever procedure she learned on the job, she actually took the unheard of step of taking the Land Rites and Wizard Law courses at Cornwall.

You heard me.

And Uriah says he's seen her frequently in Hogsmeade and around the country actually talking to the people who actually live or work on the land.

What a concept.

_**The Craft**_ has been hot on her heels ever since she took office. Whether to take her down or cheer her on, I can't tell yet. One week there's an article complaining about her failure to curb hag encroachment on midwifery. The next there's another one praising her for expediting – i.e., snatching from Ark and A – yet another case. Last one I read about involved a pureblood trying to shore up his waning fortune with illegal sales of magical substances to Muggles. Idiot.

From what I can see, she's thorough, conscientious and fair. Which means once you're in her net you might as well stop struggling.

It almost makes me feel sorry for all those ill-favored entrepreneurial purebloods.

Almost.

She's the Ministry's rarest type of administrator: she makes you believe in the Ministry again. If she ever runs for Minister of Magic, I'll happily vote for her – 2 or 3 times if necessary.

Meanwhile, the Ark and A carnival just keeps rolling along.

As I've said, the court's a joke and so are its sheriffs.

And nobody does a thing about it.

I've always wondered about that.

And thanks to my bumbling sheriff, my curiosity came back with a vengeance.

I looked at him, weighing, considering.

Two hours, a bit of ankle, two accidentally undone buttons on my blouse, five warming charms, a picnic lunch and a thermos of liberally spiked hot tea later and I'd swear I knew everything he did about that house.

Raven's Wake. That was its magical name. And an appropriate one too, since it almost sounds like an incantation. I could just imagine Severus or one of his ancestors raising his hands high and shouting skyward, "Ravens, wake!" Or maybe it was just the tea.

In Muggle records, it was known as Ravenskeep. And valued at £1,872,000. And that was 20 years ago. The property hadn't been assessed since.

It was built in the 1200s and refurbished in the 1600s. Obviously, not much had been done since it still looked like monks would break out in Gregorian chant any minute.

Originally situated in the heart of Wode's Wood, urbanization and Muggle advance had pruned back the wood until the estate now sat at its thinning border. Conservation efforts had gotten the woodland dubbed a national park. And powerful notice-me-not charms, a relatively wizard-friendly Muggle population in Yewberry, and a downright odd one in Quilton kept most Muggles away.

The wizards were another story. Over the 20 odd years since the house had been confiscated, it had been looted to the bare walls. Furniture, picture frames, mattresses, drapery, bed linens, china, rugs, tapestries, even knick knacks and keepsakes had been removed. All gone. My stomach turned over as he told me. No one could tell him if the items were in Ministry storage, stolen goods or sold to pay fines. Nor was he able to get an inventory.

I braced myself to hear the charge. It had to be serious. No landed pureblood, one who retained a magical estate, lost it for anything less than epic reasons: fiendfyre, the everflood hex, incurable dragon pox plague, excommunication between the family and its covenant daimon. And with those rumors of his former associations with You Know Who I was sure the details would be blood-curdling.

Severus' offense?

Delinquent taxes.

Or rather that was the offense my sheriff was told was on the seizure warrant.

So he'd never seen the warrant. And it never occurs to him that if they couldn't be arsed to show him – the court's property guard – an inventory of the house's goods then perhaps he shouldn't expect to get the real story on the warrant. I mean not even Longbottom would fall for that one.

Ark and A strikes again.

I gave him the rest of my goblin brandytea and cycled back to Yewberry.

And the whole while I couldn't help but wonder how Severus Snape, exacting potions master, indomitable Head of Slytherin House, watchful stewart of Hogwarts financially tightest-run house, the man who knew the course of every knut that circulated through his house, who always delivered his annual budget to me on time with no unexplained or unjustified shortfalls managed to lose his family estate for failure to pay his taxes.

By the time I'd gone back down the fairy road, returned the bicycle, and floo'd to Hogsmeade, I was already formulating a scheme for him to get it back.

* * *

**Author's End Notes:** _Okay was it worth the wait? Probably not but lie to me anyway *flutters eyelashes* Pweeze? Oh heck, fine! Just leave an honest review and we're good, lol. Oh and my apologies if I gave anyone a fright by uploading the chapter and taking it back down again. Sigh, still getting the hang up adding author's notes, etc._


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